The 8 Email Marketing Metrics You Need To Monitor

Maybe you are just getting started with email marketing and excited about all of the possibilities that it offers your business? Or maybe you have you been using email marketing in your business for a while but not keeping an eye on how your emails are actually performing? Either way I’m here to help you. I’m going to outline the 8 email marketing metrics you need to monitor.

The 8 Email Marketing Metrics You Need To Monitor - Pin

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1. OPEN RATE

The open rate is one of the simplest email marketing metrics.

Open Rate = Number of people who opened the email ÷ Number of people who received the email

Monitoring your open rate is vital because the success of your email marketing relies on people opening your emails. There is no point having a wonderfully crafted email if no one opens it.

If you regularly monitor your open rate you’ll know what your average open rate is. You can then compare this with your industry average and identify if you need to make changes to increase your open rate. To improve your open rate you can consider changing the date/time of when emails are sent, trying out different subject lines or running a re-engagement campaign.

2. CLICK-THROUGH RATE (CTR)

The click-through rate (CTR) is a great metric to monitor if your emails are designed to lead the reader somewhere.

Click-Through Rate = Number of people who clicked on a link in the email ÷ Number of people who opened the email

It may be in your emails you are driving people to a sales page or another form of content (blog posts, YouTube videos etc). If the aim of your email is to drive people to somewhere else then you should pay close attention to your click-through rate. If your click-through rate isn’t at the level you desire you can try changing the call-to-actions by changing the formatting of your links or even adding in buttons.

3. BOUNCE RATE

The bounce rate shows you the number of emails that were sent but didn’t reach an inbox. Occasionally there will be technical issues (you gotta love tech) which may result in a high bounce rate. However, if you notice that your bounce rate is consistently at the same level then you should have a look and identify why. Often it could be that the email address is incorrect and there is no point paying for people to be in your email service provider that are never going to receive an email.

4. UNSUBSCRIBE RATE

Unsubscribes is a very simple metric which shows you the percentage of people who have unsubscribing from your mailing list.

For those who are focusing on list-building it may feel discouraging to see people unsubscribing. However, from a business perspective there is no point having people on your list just for the sake of it. You want people who want to actively read your emails, follow your links and buy from you.

If you have a spike of unsubscribers it is worth trying to find out why. Did you send out an email that you knew was polarising? If so, then don’t worry about the unsubscribes as it probably means the people who have left aren’t right for your business anyway. However, if you haven’t actively done something to make people consider unsubscribe then you should try to figure out what made people take that action so you don’t accidentally do it again in the future.

5. DEVICE TYPE

This is especially important for those who enjoy creating ‘beautiful’ emails. In times gone by you could create beautiful emails with the confidence that someone would be reading them at their desktop computer and on the who they would appear to the reader virtually the same as the way you saw it when creating. Unfortunately, those days are gone. Now people read emails on desktop, tablets and mobiles. They read them in all sorts of browsers and providers. This means that you need to pay attention to what devices your subscriber is using to view your email. And if you really want to take your analysis to the next level then compare your key metrics across the difference devices and see if they are the same or differ.

6. LIST GROWTH RATE

Monitoring your list growth rate helps you to understand how quickly your email list is growing. You calculate list growth as follows:

List Growth Rate = ( (Number of New Subscribers – Number of Unsubscribers) / Number of Subscribers on Your List ) * 100

Of all of the metrics to monitor this is the one not to get obsessed. I recommend you monitor is regularly mainly so you have an understanding of you average list growth and then if you decide to do activity directly to drive list growth (such as promoting a new lead magnet) then you have a benchmark to be able to measure the success of that activity against.

7. FORWARDING/EMAIL SHARING RATE

If you create emails that you consider to be valuable in their own right then you should definitely be paying attention to the forwarding/email sharing rate.

The forward/email sharing rate tells you what % of people who have opened an email have then forwarded it on to someone (using a share or forward button.

You calculate the forwarding/email sharing rate as follows:

Forward / Email Sharing Rate = (Number of clicks on a share and/or forward button ÷ Number of total delivered emails) * 100

By paying closing attention to your forwarding/email sharing rate you can begin to understand what content people find valuable. These learnings can be used to inform future content for email, as well as other channels.

8. RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI)

Let’s be real for a moment. You aren’t sending emails for the fun of it. At the end of the day you want to make sales and when it comes to email marketing metrics for sales return on investment is the best one to calculate.

Your return on investment is calculated as follows:

Return On Investment = (Income – Expenditure) * 100

If you are a company that directly sells online this should be easy to calculate.

Income = the total value of the sales generated

Expenditure = Email service provider costs and other costs associated with the creation of emails such as a VA, copywriter, CRM manager etc.

However, if you don’t sell online you might have to get a bit more creative. For example, if people book a call before working with you then you can ask what led them to getting in touch and if they say email and then decide to work with you then you could attribute that revenue to email marketing.

There you have it! You now know the 8 email marketing metrics you need to monitor.

Hopefully you can tell that I absolutely love analytics, but I’m very aware that not everyone does. That is why I do offer a 1:1 service where I will review your analytics, provide you with a simple report that highlights the major learnings from the review and how to use those learnings in your future marketing activity. Sound good? If so, book a call to learn more about how you can make me do all the number crunching for you.